A More Diverse GOP

As I said in my post election wrap-up, I don’t think the primary problem for the Republican Party is that it isn’t “reaching” enough voters. The problem is that voters are rejecting the party and its ideology.

I’m not a political strategist or coalition-builder, but I’ve been hearing a lot of nonsense about how the GOP can revive itself.

My first thought is this: don’t panic or freak out. The Democrats lost two 49-state landslides not all that long ago, and they survived. The GOP was competitive in the popular vote, even with a candidate who was always going to be a tough sell during a recession. The GOP is also still recovering from a disastrous presidency of its own. Even if the Democrats are building a majority coalition, it is such a diverse coalition that it may tend toward instability.

There are two prevalent ideas on how to revive the GOP, and they conflict with each other. The first is that the GOP needs to ditch its own base of voters and reject social conservatism, to become a party that is about fiscal responsibility. That’s less a strategy of addition by subtraction than outright subtraction by subtraction.

Younger voters tend to be slightly more pro-life than older ones. But they are massively more in favor of gay marriage. I expect there will be some adjustment on these issues from the GOP, but the first priority should be to train its politicians not to sound like idiots when talking about them. Evangelicals and conservative religious people of all types (even Muslims) are natural constituents for a conservative party. Telling them to drop dead isn’t going to help you build a majority.There are not enough country clubs to elect a president. Further, the people advising you to tell social cons to buzz off also hate your other policies.

The second idea is that somehow Republicans need to become the party of mass Hispanic immigration. And that they can attract Hispanic voters with their family values messaging (You know, the same thing they have to ditch because of younger voters.) This is a complete dead end.

1) The GOP has never won a majority of Hispanic voters. So why in the world would it invite in a larger Democratic majority? If I were a Democratic strategist and the GOP started saying that it was necessary to double legal immigration, I’d jump up and say “Let’s quadruple it!”

2) The working-class white vote that created the modern Republican majority is precisely the subset of voters that feels most threatened by mass immigration, culturally and economically. They revolted when Bush tried to force it on them. They will revolt again. Conservative parties as a rule have constituents that resist the kind of social change brought on by mass immigration. You can be a conservative party or a mass immigration party, not both. Further, your ideas for middle-class entitlements also threaten these voters, so why would you want to confirm to them with your immigration policy that you do not have their interests at heart?

3) Recent Hispanic immigrants may be entrepreneurial and have some traditional religious values, but they most definitely do not come from political cultures that make them receptive to the GOP’s message of slashing the social welfare state.

So does that mean the GOP is dead? Hardly. And the GOP should try to win younger voters and Hispanic voters. That doesn’t mean ditching the pro-life cause, or simply translating its current ideological bilge into Spanish.

First, the GOP has to become a trustworthy governing party again. Obama, somewhat unfairly, used Mitt Romney’s long ago op-ed on the auto-bailout to confirm a stereotype in voter’s heads: Republicans don’t care about you, they just care about their ideology.

A nation’s conservative party is the natural organ for encouraging assimilation and “Americanization” of immigrants. Ron Unz, our publisher, was very wise to encourage California to teach children English at a young age. If the Democrats just want to bring immigrants in the door and into the machine, the Republicans must be the party that wants to integrate immigrants into American society, to reconcile the new America with the old America, to cheer on Hispanics as successful Americans.

A successful strategy of integration will also mean sensible limits on immigration (legal and illegal). Other opportunities may start to open up. Over 70 percent of black voters believe that immigration is too high. Conservatives already need to learn to speak to urban voters; why not start with the most-churched members of the city? Just like your core of Midwestern working-class whites, blacks believe themselves to be part of an American core that is destabilized by mass immigration. It is time to reach out to them, to assure them that you will make immigration work for all Americans, that the interests of America’s oldest minority will not be lost in the America to come. That seems like the natural task of a conservative to me.

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29 Responses to A More Diverse GOP

It’s very hard to sell anyone on anything when Democrats control the media. Any emphasis on integrating Hispanics into the mainstream would be derided as racist and white supremacist, especially during an election season. Black Americans are not going to be any use either. They vote Democrat because the Democrats are the party of anti-white resentment. No preference on immigration is going to override that.

It would be wise, however, for the Republicans to give a few rhetoric classes to their candidates, especially as they are working with a hostile media. Also, the Reagan platform has gone about as far as it can go. It’s driven many successes, but we live in a new normal now and the Republicans need to adjust. The Republicans should propose raising the capital gains tax rate modestly and revising NAFTA. I think that alone would capture the Great Lakes region, as well as taking the wind right out of the Democrats’ sails.

They should also fight Affirmative action though. It’s a widely hated program that is long past its prime. Illegal immigration is another winner. It is hated even by other immigrants.

Unz may think that we can convert Hispanics into Americans through education but how does he explain the overwhelming Asian vote for Obama. No racial group is more successful than Asians, yet they vote against the GOP that supports their economic interests. I believe that Asians, Hispanics and Blacks just refuse to vote for he “White Party.” They may never.

A good beginning would be to understand why Asians vote for the party that doesn’t want too many of them to go to graduate shool. What does the Korean grocer have in common with the party of Treyvon Martin?

Could be the future is California, as it often has been before. As a Californian, I’d be fine with that, though I doubt most of the TAC is. The Republican Party can remain a shrinking asylum for the compromise-hostile captives of rejected and hopeless dogmas. Meanwhile, the essential business of the state can be handled by the party of the state, with the broad support of the people and civil society.

I didn’t know that, but find the trend heartening, no matter how “slight.”

Perhaps conservatives should concentrate on minimizing the number of abortions as opposed to trying – or giving the impression that they’re trying – to find a way to ban or seriously restrict the practice through legal means. Conservatives needn’t compromise on their belief that abortion is wrong under most circumstances, although I do think they would do their cause some good by allowing that the right to terminate a pregnancy caused by rape is more humane than taking a hard line against abortion under all circumstances. Likewise, situations in which saving the baby seriously endangers the mother’s life. While I’m making a case for my own positions here, I believe strong moral arguments, as opposed to absolutist rhetoric, could change minds and decrease abortions without looking like a “War on Women.” This isn’t new thinking, but I think it’s worth repeating.

Republican hostility toward environmental issues drives away young, educated voters. I’ve never understood the reflexive antipithy toward concerns about clean air and water, and wildlife. My own environmental ethic grew out my conservative temperament. While I’m not anti-growth, a river bottom flooded by yet another reservoir or ugly sprawl across erstwhile prairie looks a lot like radical change to me. Russell Kirk, Wendell Berry, and Roger Scruton could be helpful here.

The GOP’s problem isn’t messaging or positioning. It’s the outright hostility of its base towards the groups it needs to start winning over. Your post is a perfect example of the contradiction – in the last paragraph, you seem to suggest an alliance with blacks on immigration. How could this possibly work when the GOP, in every other way, is dead-set against black people? Conservatives reliably fall back on slashing the safety net, firing government workers, and making it more difficult for the poor to vote. The attack on Obama for “weakening the welfare work requirement” is a perfect example.

Maybe it’s time to revive Michael Steele’s “hip hop makeover.” No need to change your position on anything – you can reach out to young people, immigrants, people of color and single women by “speaking their language.”

CK MacLeod — are you saying that California is actually a successful model fit for emulation?

I’m a native Californian, old enough to remember freeways (rather than toll roads), virtually free community colleges, very low priced state colleges, and a UC that was accessible to middle class smart kids who didn’t spend every weekend in a SAT cram school. A state whose NAEP scores didn’t rival Mississippi and Alabama for 50th place on the league table.

People a bit older than me can remember a time when the Neil Diamond’s lyrics

“/ LA’s fine the sun shines most of the time

And the feeling is laid back

Palm trees grow and

rents are low /

were true in total. A time when native-born Americans actually migrated too the state, instead of out of it (the case , in net, for the last two decades).

I love the state, I grew up there, I have family ties that keep me here. But it is now in serious trouble. Immigration is in no small way responsible for that.

what was the commonly referenced word on Tuesday night (all networks, all pundits)? it was demographics. now, some on the right view “demographics” as a bad wor – presumably because it requires tacticians and political operatives to consider the fact there are 300 million Americans; and they’re not all white, male, Christians (Mormons included… sometimes). now I am not so blind to consider the left’s view of “demographics” to be more of a means to an end; but is not it the objective of any party to actually WIN the election (easisest path would seem to be a broader appeal). and I am not talking about America “dying” or as Bill O’Reilly believe “traditional America is gone…” most of the issues that offer the left a broader “fan base” are social/theocratic leftovers, that have little impact on foreign policy, fiscal policy/domestic spending, etc. it’s not about “buying votes” or “Santa Claus” (which implies that any demographic group attracted to left of center policy can be “bought” and nothing if not ironic; as it it the essence of any politician – left or right to sell to the highest bidder). it’s about telling Americans they have “skin in the game”.

Excellent point. The GOP was once the party of the environment. The EPA was started, after all, during the Nixon administration. Pete Wilson’s strategy of decent public transport and ‘smart growth’ still affects San Diego in a positive way. Of course, no amount of environmental regulation can mitigate the effects of the huge, immigration driven population growth we are experiencing.

A good starting point for a GOP revival might be a review of basic history. Evangelical Christians in the United States did not have an issue with abortion prior to Roe v Wade. In fact, a research of the history will show that evangelical organizations (even Southern Baptist Convention) were onboard with Roe when it was decided.

The same is true for the other hot-button issues, evolution and homosexuality.

GOP operatives in the early 70s began using these issues as “wedge” issues to divide the electorate for particular political reasons. They brought the evangelicals into the fight. This is a confrontation staged for political reasons that had nothing to do with the “unborn.”

If the party wants to reclaim a position as a serious political player on the national stage, it would do well to return to its “roots” and stop dancing to the piping of organizations which are using the political process for ends not necessarily stated in their manifestos. Currently, the party has no “thought leaders” in any sense that has anything to do with engagement of the intellect. The way to change that is to stop making tactical action the focus and start making strategic thinking the focus. Plato wrote, “The life unexamined is not worth living.” The GOP is the poster child for that realization.

Stalwarts in the GOP will never open the tent to include anyone who disagrees with them on abortion, war, drug legalization or immigration. What you suggest requires some of the most ideological creatures on earth to say, “let’s start with what we agree on and build a coalition”. Never going to happen. You are going to be called RINO for even suggesting it. There must be, within both parties, the nucleus of a new party oriented toward individual freedom and free markets. What we need is leadership with the stones to build it. After watching the GOP mock Ron Paul, who has more integrity than anyone I have ever seen in public life, so viciously even as they plotted another losing campaign against the most vulnerable candidate I’ve ever heard of I don’t care what happens to them. There’s no difference between them and any other totalitarian. New GOP or No GOP!

Unlike Mr. Meehan, I think this is measured, well thought out piece. I am a person that thinks whites must organize, as whites, in our now multicultural democracy. I think that much of the supposed social conservatism of Hispanics is wishful thinking, and their tendency to be small time entrepreneurs not all that helpful in a post industrial society (Mexico has plenty of entrepreneurship — taco carts, folks selling drinks by the road, etc — economic progress society-wide requires a lot more than simply having people who start small businesses).

However, given a fairly sharp cut in new arrivals (a doubtful possibility politically, but who knows), I think you’d see over time something close to what has happened with Italian Americans (not exact, not with such ‘good’ results), but close. That is, I don’t think there would be a chip on the ethnic shoulder about the immigration restriction) and I think you’d see a fair number of Hispanics turn gradually to the GOP and conservatism.

“The same is true for the other hot-button issues, evolution and homosexuality.”

I don’t know about Roe, but evangelical ‘opposition’ to evolution goes back to the Scopes Monkey trial, and homosexuality wasn’t really an issue before the 1970s, because just about all sectors of society stigmatized it.

So your solution to improve the GOP’s electoral position is further division and parsing of ethnic groups against each each other…divide and conquer, I suppose? I guess for all the “Big Tent” rhetoric, GOP strategy really just comes down to Old South anachronisms.

Perhaps conservatives should concentrate on minimizing the number of abortions as opposed to trying – or giving the impression that they’re trying – to find a way to ban or seriously restrict the practice through legal means.

Its a good idea, but the problem for conservatives is that minimizing the number of abortion runs afoul of other “wedge” social conservative issues like sex ed and the funding of prenatal programs.

To be blunt, you cannot realistically reduce pregnancies AND teach abstinence only sex ed or get into hissy fits about covering the cost of contraception. This also gets to the funding of organizations like planned parenthood, which provides a lot of prenatal care and support to low income individuals.

The problem right now is that the entire turn to ideological purity means that people want to have their cake and eat it too on these sorts of issues.

Obama’s 2012 expansion over Romney of the nearly two-to-one ratio he usurped McCain by amongst Hispanics in 2008 spells doom for the future of the Republican Party. I predict a split in the GOP over the issue of illegal immigration which could permanently cripple the Party. Hardcore right-wingers will want to double down on AZ-type laws and voter ID rules to suppress the Hispanic vote, libertarians and moderates will want to move toward reconciliation—neither side will prevail, and the Dems will own the issue in perpetuity. The Obama victory also points to two other issues the biased conservative media won’t talk about (yes, the right has its own issues of political correctness, i.e., those things you can’t talk about, like common sense cutting of defense spending, letting go of the abortion issue, a path to legalization for illegal immigrants with no criminal record, etc., etc., etc.). The first, as even my 82-year-old white mother will tell you, is that there are too many old “crackers” in the Republican Party to be able to appeal to a nation that is increasingly young, female, and Latino. As Jim DeMint said last week, “This is the last time anybody is gonna try to do this.” The ‘this’ DeMint was talking about is the attempt to win the White House with an all-white party. The fact that the conservative media—Fox News, talk radio, and the blogosphere—refused to report what DeMint said, is part of the echo chamber Republicans live in—they only hear what they wanna hear, which brings up the second problem. While Sean Hannity was doing his cheerleader routine on the radio and at Fox, serious issues were being ignored. Anybody who brought up those issues was considered a traitor to the party line conservative cause as espoused by millionaire pundits like Bill O’Reilly ($50m), Hannity ($38m), Matt Drudge ($90m), Ann Coulter ($8m), and all the others whose net worth’s you can find at http://www.celebritynetworth.com. As The American Conservative inferred in an article by John Derbyshire back in February of 2009 (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/how-radio-wrecks-the-right/), intellectual conservatism has been replaced by a rigid, almost Marxist-like, slavish devotion to sound bite idiocy.
This idiocy has allowed a small clique of right-wing mouthpieces to become wealthy; very, very wealthy. This legally earned wealth has acted as a lubricant for a slippery slope decent into irrelevance for the demonstrably superior ideas of limited government. Due to these pundits’ economic immunity from the machinations of the rigged-market place, they fail to see populist issues correctly from their Country Club perches. Their wealth (and the rightness of their perspective it implies) also acts as a sort of hedge fund against anybody else getting a seat at the table of ideas (dig the same old smug faces—like smirking Bill Kristol’s—siting around the table with Bret Baier every night on Fox). The cerebral, free-market, common sense of Milton Friedman and others who paved the way for the Reagan Revolution has been replaced by the wind bag buffoonery of Rush Limbaugh ($400m, yes, you read that right, $400m), and the traveling tent show revivalism of Glenn Beck’s ($85m) Love Parade. And then, to top it off, the GOP goes ahead and nominates a guy who could basically be the poster boy for everything America hates about the rich: old, white, stiff, out-of-touch, unhip, and involved in the sort of financial paper shuffling that is both over the head of the average American, and which, at best, produces nothing of tangible value to the economy, while wreaking havoc when it goes awry. Meanwhile, the Reagan Revolution has been turned into such a holy grail of self-evident truth, any objective analysis of its faults and weaknesses is looked upon as hearsay. So welcome to the new America, or what we will shortly be calling…a suburb of Greece.

I tend to agree with M.Young on a number of point. First, as a native Californian, I do not see the state as an example, but rather a cautionary tale. Especially as it relates to the growth of government dependency and the impact of uncontrolled immigration (in fact the very native of it being uncontrolled makes it something other than immigration). The fact that each undocumented resident of the state costs the California taxpayer ~$20,000/year (a conservative number) @ 2.5 million people mean about 50 billion dollars in economic costs/year. So when M.Young talks about the decline in education, public services, etc. it is heavily related to this, as well as the expansion of the statist model of California government.

Where I think that California can be a bit of a policy lab is in finding ways to message on the need to limit government growth and reduce government, while pursuing policies leading to a more controlled immigration approach. I do not think you can complete restrict immigration, but I think it will be possible to reasonable control immigration – especially if there is a willingness to pursue things like temp guest working arrangement etc., which would support the need for low income farm labor, without burdening the social system with complete family relocation etc.

Although, I do disagree on the concept of “racialism” as a policy strategy. I think there are plenty of opportunities for the GOP, or whatever party wishes to pursue policies focused on reducing statism and controlling immigration outside of “white” american. Certainly Asians (Koreans, Indians, Japanese, even Chinese, etc) as well as suburban blacks would be reachable with rational, measured, and reasonable policy proposal along these lines. Certain an initial focus on commonality of economic interests would open the door to idea sharing and collaboration on other issues, including social policy issues.

To me the desire to make the GOP the “white” persons party creates a barrier before the other conversation can take place, and will ensure the demise of the GOP, or other “conservative” parties.

Or — maybe — conservatives ought to go and work within the Democratic Party?
Conservatives believe in diversity, local control, and such — why not?
What do Conserv atives have to lose?
The Republicans are dominated by Wilsonian Neocons and panderers and pimps for those with wealth, power, and privelige, and have no use for Conservatives —
Why Not?
Can’t be any harder one way than the other, and maybe a lot easier than you think.

In my view, the problem, at its root, is the lack of safety-valve frontiers. Both Tim Leary and Buckminster Fuller described California as the result of 20,000 years of people saying, “Fork this, I’m going West.”

Instead, anarchists, pioneers, misfits, and other types of Those People remain embedded in once-free states that have evolved into political senesence like the pestholes Those People once escaped from. They ferment like yeast and serve as an irritant to practically everybody. I say this as one of the hopeful brewers who started the California Libertarian Party in 1972.

The direction is not left or right, forward or back, but Up and Out. Not much chance of that, though.

How about expanding the realm of concern to encompass the concerns of minorities and others who normally reject Republicans? Our war on drugs is a prime example. Mass imprisonment is another. Both are massively expensive and cause more problems than they solve. Both are big issues for minorities who are disproportionately affected by them. How about instead of fighting (needed) consumer protections in the name of fighting excessive regulation, Republicans take on laws and regulations which have the effect of protecting large, existing companies over small start ups? There are tons of examples from unnecessary licensing requirements to over-reaching safety requirements which make sense for large producers but hurt those engaged in micro or hand-crafting. If government safety nets aren’t the answer, talk about what is in a way that makes sense to people who are already doing their best and not succeeding.

Part of why the GOP message isn’t getting much traction is because it is largely the party of people for whom the system/our way of doing things works. But there are an ever increasing number of people for whom it’s not working. Rather than being angry at them for daring to suggest that we need to do anything other than more of what we’ve already done start listening to people when they talk about their concerns. Stop telling people why their problems aren’t really problems or putting the weight of solving them entirely on them. If it were that easy, people would already be doing it.

“in fact the very [nature] of it being uncontrolled makes it something other than immigration”

That is a point that cannot be stressed enough. This wave of Mexican (mostly) immigration is more like a migration in Middle Ages Europe, the mass movement of peoples dissimilar in language, culture, and even appearance into lands occupied by another people. We see changing ‘language frontiers’. There are plenty of neighborhoods, towns, and even workplaces in California where Spanish, not English, is the language), and unlike in the case of European immigration, these are not isolated islands, but large swaths of territory.

“To me the desire to make the GOP the “white” persons party creates a barrier before the other conversation can take place, and will ensure the demise of the GOP, or other “conservative” parties.”

I don’t think the GOP should be an organization for whites, but I think that whites must have a non-partisan political interest group. That’s the way the game is played now. The Democrats interface with plenty of them.

BTW, I really don’t understand why the scare quotes around ‘white’ — since the beginning of the Republic white has been a recognized category of person in the US, and its common parlance on the ‘street’ today. For example, no one ever writes ‘the Republicans are too “white”‘. No scare quotes there, boy.

Well, no state can now afford free college. I attended school in La and Orange in the 1960’s and 1970’s they were medocre back then as well inspite of the progandra knew white kids in high school that read a 5th grade level in 1975 before the massive illegal immirgation I would have received a better education if I remain in Colorado that probably spent less on education but used phonetics. I spelled and write poorly and I’m product of the California School system from 1963 to 1975 .

The Republicans are also going to have to confront the Puerto Rican vote for statehood on Tuesday. If that gets through Congress and the White House, you’re looking at a majority Spanish-speaking state with seven electoral votes. If the GOP can’t solve its problems with Hispanic voters, those seven electoral votes that will go straight to the Democratic column in 2016.

Outside the South white people are all over the map politically. That’s why Obama did so well in the upper Midwest after all” large numbers of tose white people are liberals. Ditto on the west coast and, certainly, in the northeast. So any “organizing” of white people would have the effect of making the GOP an even more Southern regional party than it already is. Which would not be good for the party’s national fortunes.

I think all the commenters are missing the fact this is post the most well thought out and practical plan for the GOP I’ve read so far post election. It’s a way for the GOP to stay competitive without losing their base. Since I’m pretty liberal, I’m happy the rest of the GOP is too crazy to listen, at least for another 15 years or so.